Diaries of Note: 366 Lives, One Day at a Time
For the past five years, I’ve been quietly working on the most ambitious book I’ve ever attempted: Diaries of Note: 366 Lives, One Day at a Time. A collection unlike anything I’ve compiled before, it features 366 diary entries—one for every day of the (leap!) year—each written by a different person, plucked from history. The result is a vivid mosaic of human life: messy, brilliant, funny, devastating, inspiring, extraordinary.
There are household names and complete unknowns. World events and private moments. Some entries are only a sentence long; others sprawl across the page. But every single one offers something: insight, wit, longing, heartbreak, beauty, absurdity. This is what it means to be alive, one day at a time.
Featured diarists include: Anne Frank, Virginia Woolf, Salvador Dalí, Alan Rickman, Audre Lorde, Frida Kahlo, Derek Jarman, Emma Thompson, Michael Palin, Joan Rivers, Etty Hillesum, Tennessee Williams, Simone de Beauvoir, Noël Coward, Samuel Pepys, Tina Brown, and many more. There are astronauts and prisoners. Teenagers and monarchs. Comedians, composers, painters, poets. People writing for themselves, never expecting to be read.
I’ve long believed that diaries—when written honestly—capture life more intimately than almost anything else. They’re time machines. And to gather hundreds of these moments in one place has been a long-held dream.
Whether you read it in daily instalments, dip in at random, or devour it in one go, I hope Diaries of Note offers you what it has offered me: comfort, connection, laughter, and the strange relief of realising that people have always felt like this.
Order your copy
Diaries of Note will be published in the UK on 9th October 2025 and is available to pre-order now from all level-headed, right-minded, forward-thinking stockists:
Your favourite local independent bookseller
Release date: 9 October 2024
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Hardback | 400 pages | RRP £25
ISBN: 9780571390229